TORONTO – The Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU) Bold fell 4-1 to the Concordia Stingers in the 113th Queen's Cup Final on Saturday evening at the Mattamy Athletic Centre.
It happened so fast, yet made all the difference in extending TMU's woes in the Queen's Cup final another year.
Head coach of the Bold, Johnny Duco, didn't even glance as five members of the Concordia Stingers capped off a flurry of goals with a celebration to the right of his side's bench and a 2-0 lead in their favour during the final minutes of Saturday's opening period.
Instead, Duco–who played a lively role in assembling a squad capable of making consecutive appearances in the league's biggest event–used his eye for elation to pick out the Stingers as they celebrated their 4-1 victory in the league final with sticks and gloves scattered around centre ice.
"It's tough," stated Duco following the game. "You know, this Concordia team is a hell of a team and when you play at this level with these stakes…the margin for error is pretty much zero."
One of the errors for the Bold stemmed from the botched reception of an innocent dump in by their netminder Kai Edmonds late in the first frame. The mistake quickly became an expensive one for the veteran netminder who made 48 saves in last year's Queen's Cup final, and pivotally led to Concordia's Alexander Gaudio securing the eventual game-winning tally.
But the biggest error of all on Saturday stemmed from TMU's inability to use their special teams unit to reel themselves back into the contest for the 47 minutes after surrendering a pair of goals, going 1 for 7 on the powerplay despite spending a third of their time trailing the Stingers while occupying an extra attacker.
"When you go one for seven on the powerplay, you're not going to win a big hockey game," said Duco. "In the end, that's kind of what cost us. That second goal can't happen…we got to be sharper than that but it comes down to the lack of execution on the powerplay."
The Bold had leaned on their man-advantage heavily to help get themselves in a position to even play hockey this late in the season, capitalizing on over 35 percent of their chances since January 10th and using the extra man to carve out important wins over Lakehead and UofT in their previous series.
On Saturday, despite scoring on the powerplay with a single second left to cut their deficit to one late in the final frame, the difference-maker for the blue and gold failed to yield the result they needed to claim their first league title in program history.
The group had a golden opportunity to clap back at the Stingers just minutes after Nicholas Girouard and Gaudio built a 2-0 lead for the visitors, but let the chance slip away after testing Nikolas Hurtubise once to bow out of the first frame.
The Bold saw a pair of chances evaporate in the middle frame as well, and if not for a crucial save from Edmonds to deny Isiah Campbell in the opening minutes, would be in need of more opportunities to even up the score.
The Stingers were able to shut the door on TMU's attacks to stay on top on the Toronto side, flexing their league-best defence and their inability to conceed shorthanded to help push the Bold into desperation mode to start the final frame.
Discipline continued to be Concordia's flaw in the final twenty minutes, leaving the path back into the contest wide open for the Bold to follow. Yet four penalties, including a pair from Daniel Agostino, failed to yield anything more than Chris Playfair breaking Concordia's shutout bid with 1:29 remaining in the contest.
The Bold challenged Hurtubise with 14 shots to try and extend Saturday's match into overtime, but the Stingers netminder met all but one of those tasks to all but secure his name on the MVP award for the 113th edition of the Queen's Cup.
Concordia's Sean Larochelle and Alexandre Nadeau added a pair of empty-netters in the final 30 seconds to clinch victory in the program's first-ever appearance in the prestigious event.
The Bold will head to the U SPORTS National Championship with a lower seeding than the Stingers but with just as much, if not more to prove than their opponent on Saturday as they gear up for an afternoon game in the nation's capital on Mar. 20.
Yet even as their season continues to run, a second defeat in the Queen's Cup final lingered on all members of the blue and gold following Saturday's loss.
Oasis' hit song, Don't Look Back In Anger rang around the Mattamy Athletic Centre (MAC) as the Stingers suited up in their championship apparel.
Though the defeat will be viewed as just another bump in the road for Duco's side, the song will remain fitting for years to come, as with the amount of opportunities that the group let slip away in the loss, looking back in anger might just be the most natural reaction of them all when remembering the 4-1 defeat.
